Re: Suggestion for improved wording when reporting unrecognised attribute

On Mon, 8 Aug 2005, Philip TAYLOR wrote:

> - - I am forced to agree that the diagnostic in its short
> form /is/ a little misleading.  I wonder whether an
> alternative form, such as
>
> 	'Unrecognised attribute "HEIGHT" used'
>
> might be simpler for some users of the Validator ?

This is a recurring theme, and I think several improved wordings have been 
proposed. Your proposal is surely better than the current one. It's a 
somewhat tough issue, though. It's the combination of attribute and 
element that counts, and the DTD of course. There's nothing inherently 
wrong or unrecognized about the attribute "HEIGHT".

Since the validator is presumably based on program code where the 
information about the element is lost at the point where the error is 
detected, we cannot say
         'Attribute "HEIGHT" not allowed for element "TABLE"'
and saying
         'Attribute "HEIGHT" not allowed for this element'
would be somewhat awkward, when "this element" is not something 
immediately in the user's scope. But even
         'Attribute "HEIGHT" not allowed'
would make sense.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Monday, 8 August 2005 10:17:17 UTC